Anyone Gone From a P4 to a A64?

[Ender17]

If so, did you notice a difference in multitasking ability due to the lack of hyperthreading? I'm thinking of upgrading my 2.8C to a 3200+, but the not having hyperthreading makes me second guess it.


And this article seems to support this somewhat, as it shows the P4 winning in most of the multitasking benchmarks.

However, I think smoothness is a difficult thing to benchmark. I don't do heavy multitasking, but I do like to have several things running, especially since I have dual displays.

For example, I usually have half a dozen browser windows open, music playing, and I may be ripping/burning a movie in the background. And of course my AV program running in the background as well. If I'm doing something like gaming, it's usually the only thing running, cause you can't really switch back and forth.

So if you've recently changed systems from a P4 with HT to a A64, what changes did you notice, what do you use the computer for, what type of multitasking do you do, and how big of a speed jump did you make (i.e. 2.8c to 3200+)?

 

[Theguynextdoor]

I have a Newcastle 64 with only 512 RAM, and it's GREAT at multitasking!

I have WMP running, teatime, sygate, AVG, lots of bloat (styleXP), and a bunch of other stuff down in the taskbar, I surf the net, watch movies, play pool, trillian, AIM, MSN, YIM, miranda (if you're wondering why I would be running all of this is because multiple identities are fun )

Now I've never used a P4, so I couldn't tell you if there is a difference. That and there are many factors.

I have the Corsair XMS pro wich are rated at DDR500 (which I do run it at btw )

So that's just my tidbit of info.

 

[Imyourzero]

I went from a P4 2.53 to an A64 3400+

I've never been a heavy multitasker, really. What you described (net browser + music + CD burning) is usually the most I'll have going on at one time, though I usually have my BitTorrent client running as well. During all this (usually waiting for a download to finish), I'll frequently load up HL2 or Far Cry or Chronicles of Riddick and play for a while and then come back to the desktop. My A64 has been able to handle all of this with ease, so I don't feel that I'm missing out by not having HT.

I was recently very tempted to switch to a 3.4 or 3.6 GHz Prescott just to see what all the hyperthreading hype was about, but I realized that my A64 has power to spare for what I need it to do...plus since I play demanding PC games I wanted the superior gaming CPU.

 

[Duvie]

I did....

Yes I lost some of the multitasking ability....In some instances I miss it and in other ways I love a machine that is so much cooler...I run 2 less case fans and have a much cooler system overall...My case temp is much cooler, HDDs are, vid card, etc....

Also this 2.6ghz I have going now beats my p4 2.4@3.5ghz in most of the apps I ran. HT is the only saving grace in any test the 3.5ghz beats this 2.6ghz at.

Ultimately I think the sckt 939 platform for which I went is perfectly positioned for dual core chips which amd will likely have to market first and run again much cooler thus meaning for an ocer like me probably more headroom....

If you dont need the more speed I would say wait on what you have or oc the 2.8c and see if you can gain some more life out of it...A lot of the 2.8c's did 3.2ghz minimum and 3.5ghz max....The prescott line for me was the reason I switched...What a miserable incarnation of a cpu upgrade...longer pipe, hotter, and less performance mhzx for mhz versus the northwood..yeah I was jumping out of my chair for that one!!!!


Things I miss the multitasking in....

FH and doing other things and actually get work done on the units...much better.....

Doing heavy encoding or Cadd rendering and wathcing a DVD why downloading was smoother all around.....


Most ppl who will chime in and say my A64 does that fine, just never had tried a p4 with HT so they really just dont know or have a basis to compare...

I feel it gone...but like I said this system is soo much faster at most single task I can't pass that up....

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I did....

Yes I lost some of the multitasking ability....In some instances I miss it and in other ways I love a machine that is so much cooler...I run 2 less case fans and have a much cooler system overall...My case temp is much cooler, HDDs are, vid card, etc....

Also this 2.6ghz I have going now beats my p4 2.4@3.5ghz in most of the apps I ran. HT is the only saving grace in any test the 3.5ghz beats this 2.6ghz at.

Ultimately I think the sckt 939 platform for which I went is perfectly positioned for dual core chips which amd will likely have to market first and run again much cooler thus meaning for an ocer like me probably more headroom....

If you dont need the more speed I would say wait on what you have or oc the 2.8c and see if you can gain some more life out of it...A lot of the 2.8c's did 3.2ghz minimum and 3.5ghz max....The prescott line for me was the reason I switched...What a miserable incarnation of a cpu upgrade...longer pipe, hotter, and less performance mhzx for mhz versus the northwood..yeah I was jumping out of my chair for that one!!!!


Things I miss the multitasking in....

FH and doing other things and actually get work done on the units...much better.....

Doing heavy encoding or Cadd rendering and wathcing a DVD why downloading was smoother all around.....


Most ppl who will chime in and say my A64 does that fine, just never had tried a p4 with HT so they really just dont know or have a basis to compare...

I feel it gone...but like I said this system is soo much faster at most single task I can't pass that up....

Yea, if you bring that 2.8 P4 to 3.5GHZ speeds it will be like night and day. 2.8GHZ is relatively slow compared to how high the FSB is at 3.5GHZ speeds, just look at the system in my sig. It's a PITA to play games at default clock speeds, just not enough juice for me.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I did....

Yes I lost some of the multitasking ability....In some instances I miss it and in other ways I love a machine that is so much cooler...I run 2 less case fans and have a much cooler system overall...My case temp is much cooler, HDDs are, vid card, etc....

Also this 2.6ghz I have going now beats my p4 2.4@3.5ghz in most of the apps I ran. HT is the only saving grace in any test the 3.5ghz beats this 2.6ghz at.

Ultimately I think the sckt 939 platform for which I went is perfectly positioned for dual core chips which amd will likely have to market first and run again much cooler thus meaning for an ocer like me probably more headroom....

If you dont need the more speed I would say wait on what you have or oc the 2.8c and see if you can gain some more life out of it...A lot of the 2.8c's did 3.2ghz minimum and 3.5ghz max....The prescott line for me was the reason I switched...What a miserable incarnation of a cpu upgrade...longer pipe, hotter, and less performance mhzx for mhz versus the northwood..yeah I was jumping out of my chair for that one!!!!


Things I miss the multitasking in....

FH and doing other things and actually get work done on the units...much better.....

Doing heavy encoding or Cadd rendering and wathcing a DVD why downloading was smoother all around.....


Most ppl who will chime in and say my A64 does that fine, just never had tried a p4 with HT so they really just dont know or have a basis to compare...

I feel it gone...but like I said this system is soo much faster at most single task I can't pass that up....

If Duvie left his P4s then the A64s must be good. (Which they are. )

 

[Duvie]

Exactly! The system can benefit from the 250fsb or 1000 system fsb and the bandwidth it can create...

I saw some big differnce in running my 2.4ghz at stock 800fsb to 3.0ghz with 250fsb then to 3.5ghz with 292fsb for 1168fsb.....

A nice upgrade built within ready for you to tap....

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Exactly! The system can benefit from the 250fsb or 1000 system fsb and the bandwidth it can create...

I saw some big differnce in running my 2.4ghz at stock 800fsb to 3.0ghz with 250fsb then to 3.5ghz with 292fsb for 1168fsb.....

A nice upgrade built within ready for you to tap....

YUp. I love them too ! (and dual Opterons)

 

[Jeffyboy]

I sold a PC to a customer the other day. A P3 to a 2800+ AMD64. Had to do a repair install of WinXP on her ghost copy but everything worked out fine.

Jeff

 

[ComatoseDelirium]

I prefer P4's atleast for my budget right now.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: ComatoseDelirium
I prefer P4's atleast for my budget right now.

OK, the Athlon64 is faster and cheaper than the same rated P4. What are you saying ? You like to burn money ?

 

[ComatoseDelirium]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: ComatoseDelirium
I prefer P4's atleast for my budget right now.

OK, the Athlon64 is faster and cheaper than the same rated P4. What are you saying ? You like to burn money ?

Well that being my favourite pass time of course , but really I do a lot of mutlitasking, and know a guy who deals with used p4's which are in abundance, so i get them for around half of the retail price, and I already have p4 mobo's so, its one less thing to buy, don't take it as such an insult.

 

[Kishan]

Am I the only one who thinks this would be a waste of money? Maybe a better video card/some more RAM would be money well spent.

 

[Ender17]

some good replies, keep 'em coming

what I'm considering right now is whether to keep my current setup and try to OC it or get one of the following

1) a 3.4E 775 and try for 4GHz
2) wait for the DFI S939 board and get a 3200+ to tide me over until the dual core chips

I could OC my current system and wait for the dual core chips, but my wimpy IC7-G only puts ont 2.8v vdimm which doesn't do anything for BH-5
of course I could get some TCCD, but I'd want the BH-5 later
I'd like to try and run a 5:4 divider, but I don't think my 2.8c will do 3.5GHz

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

I have an A64 3000+ Newcastle with 512MB RAM, and multitasking is not an issue. I can easily rip, re-encode and burn DVD's while surfing, checking newsgroups, working in MS Office, and all the while having NAV 2005 (auto protect enabled) and Zone Alarm running. Sometimes I even fire up WinAmp just because I can.

And by most standards here, this is a budget system! I built the whole thing for less than $600 (course I already had a monitor).

 

[ComatoseDelirium]

Ender It seems like a waste of money to me.. OC your P4, get new/better/more ram, to tide you over to the dual core p4's and athlons.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Hurricane Andrew
I have an A64 3000+ Newcastle with 512MB RAM, and multitasking is not an issue. I can easily rip, re-encode and burn DVD's while surfing, checking newsgroups, working in MS Office, and all the while having NAV 2005 (auto protect enabled) and Zone Alarm running. Sometimes I even fire up WinAmp just because I can.

And by most standards here, this is a budget system! I built the whole thing for less than $600 (course I already had a monitor).

unfortunatley most of you clueless about the benefits of p4s and multitasking always do this...hey lets list a bunch of apps on there, that on their own dont take much cpu usage anyways...

ripping dvds...duh...thisa takes about nothing and is more I/O dependent between the dvd-rom and the writing speed of the harddrive....

Re-encoding..like dvd-shrink?? It doesn't even hold 100% percent on my machines cause again it is dependent on reading and writing speeds of I/O drives....

Burning??? LOL doesnt take shite of cpu usage...

All that other crap takes ram but rarely polls a 1-3 cpu usage in the background...

LMAO!!!!


try 2 apps that normally on their own would take 100% cpu usage and then see how that works...See how much time it takes to get each thing done...How about play a wmv-hd file and do something liek encoding....tell me if the video stutters...tell me hjow long or how much of the encoding is getting done!!!!

I know the answers...

I have done this testing for you and I can tell you the HT was a slight benefit in this area and is better then current A64's. fact!!!

 

[Amaroque]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I did....

Yes I lost some of the multitasking ability....In some instances I miss it and in other ways I love a machine that is so much cooler...I run 2 less case fans and have a much cooler system overall...My case temp is much cooler, HDDs are, vid card, etc....

Also this 2.6ghz I have going now beats my p4 2.4@3.5ghz in most of the apps I ran. HT is the only saving grace in any test the 3.5ghz beats this 2.6ghz at.

Ultimately I think the sckt 939 platform for which I went is perfectly positioned for dual core chips which amd will likely have to market first and run again much cooler thus meaning for an ocer like me probably more headroom....

If you dont need the more speed I would say wait on what you have or oc the 2.8c and see if you can gain some more life out of it...A lot of the 2.8c's did 3.2ghz minimum and 3.5ghz max....The prescott line for me was the reason I switched...What a miserable incarnation of a cpu upgrade...longer pipe, hotter, and less performance mhzx for mhz versus the northwood..yeah I was jumping out of my chair for that one!!!!


Things I miss the multitasking in....

FH and doing other things and actually get work done on the units...much better.....

Doing heavy encoding or Cadd rendering and wathcing a DVD why downloading was smoother all around.....


Most ppl who will chime in and say my A64 does that fine, just never had tried a p4 with HT so they really just dont know or have a basis to compare...

I feel it gone...but like I said this system is soo much faster at most single task I can't pass that up....

The P4 does multitask smoother... I'll attest to that. I've noticed if you play with your programs priorities, you can get somewhat similar results though. YMMV

A dual cored A64 will make that a moot point though. Personally, I'll jump on that when they come out.

 

[stevty2889]

Dual monitors, plus P4 with hyperthreading=multitask heaven. Altough I have't tried a A64 yet, I can see a definate differance between having hyperthreading enabled and disabled. I like being able to play a game at 1280x1024 on one monitor, while doing whatever, including another game, on the second monitor also at 1280x1024. Although I have to admit it does get a bit sluggish when playing 2 different MMORPG's at the same time, one on each monitor, but I think even then, it's GPU/Ram limited, as my cpu usage is only at 85% when doing that.

 

[Duvie]

I agree and my upgrade path followed that logic...dual cor will be even better cause it will be 2 physical cpus more so then the 2 virtual cpus the p4 with HT appear as...PLus Intel's design which appears to be merely prescotts will share one bus to the memory and thus I think will be severly bandwidth limited....

AMD's dual core design appears to be much better.

 

[Amaroque]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I agree and my upgrade path followed that logic...dual cor will be even better cause it will be 2 physical cpus more so then the 2 virtual cpus the p4 with HT appear as...PLus Intel's design which appears to be merely prescotts will share one bus to the memory and thus I think will be severly bandwidth limited....

AMD's dual core design appears to be much better.

I just hope AMD supports 939 with 2c CPU's... AKAIK they already confirmed support for 940.

I agree, HT will not be needed with a 2c CPU. Plus, I'm not sure what Intel will do, have 4 virtual CPU's? WinXP Pro only supports two...

Does that mean you will need the server version? Or will Intel drop HT when 2c comes out? I don't see that happening either, because they need it to keep the long P4 pipeline fed.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

 

[Duvie]

Intel I thought already stated that HT was disabled on the dual cores....It made sense when I thought they were going to be dothan based...Ht has its advantage only because the longer pipeline of the p4 has longer idle wait states....With dothan and shorter pipe it is more like an athlon and this fails to materialize into much of anything....

Sense rumor is they will be merely prescotts it seem they could possibly work...i think lack of space (number of transistors needed) and what not, may be the factor why they may not be there..Maybe the fact HT when enabled adds more heat and 2 of them could take an already record power user over the top for conventional cooling methods.....

AMD has ony announced 940 pin first because they have already stated dual core will hit server and worhstations first in the form of opterons..thus the 940 pin....Undoubtedly the sister chip or desktop chip will be sckt 939....

Edit: Win XP home will only see 2 virtual cpus...pro is needed to see 2 physical cpus...pro can see 4 virtual cpus with xeons....I guess we will have to see how dual core are actually seen to see if this will comply with already in place standards...

 

[Darth Farter]

Originally posted by: Ender17
some good replies, keep 'em coming

what I'm considering right now is whether to keep my current setup and try to OC it or get one of the following

1) a 3.4E 775 and try for 4GHz
2) wait for the DFI S939 board and get a 3200+ to tide me over until the dual core chips

I could OC my current system and wait for the dual core chips, but my wimpy IC7-G only puts ont 2.8v vdimm which doesn't do anything for BH-5
of course I could get some TCCD, but I'd want the BH-5 later
I'd like to try and run a 5:4 divider, but I don't think my 2.8c will do 3.5GHz

hmm someone could've told him this:

1) you have a socket478 mobo, so the socket 775 3.4E will not fit at all, nor does it give more performance if you'd overclock your p4c to 3.4 speeds (using some quality ram & high fsb).
2) try getting a nforce4 ultra based system in that case, but bear in mind it uses pci-e graphics so you'll be needing a new vidcard. else try a nforce3 250 system that does have agp.

if you have the money, I'd go with a a64 system even if it would be for just owning both and seeing for myself the differences.

 

[Ender17]

Originally posted by: Darth Farter

Originally posted by: Ender17
some good replies, keep 'em coming

what I'm considering right now is whether to keep my current setup and try to OC it or get one of the following

1) a 3.4E 775 and try for 4GHz
2) wait for the DFI S939 board and get a 3200+ to tide me over until the dual core chips

I could OC my current system and wait for the dual core chips, but my wimpy IC7-G only puts ont 2.8v vdimm which doesn't do anything for BH-5
of course I could get some TCCD, but I'd want the BH-5 later
I'd like to try and run a 5:4 divider, but I don't think my 2.8c will do 3.5GHz

hmm someone could've told him this:

1) you have a socket478 mobo, so the socket 775 3.4E will not fit at all, nor does it give more performance if you'd overclock your p4c to 3.4 speeds (using some quality ram & high fsb).
2) try getting a nforce4 ultra based system in that case, but bear in mind it uses pci-e graphics so you'll be needing a new vidcard. else try a nforce3 250 system that does have agp.

if you have the money, I'd go with a a64 system even if it would be for just owning both and seeing for myself the differences.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. If I got the 775, I'd get a new MB, probably the DFI board that takes 775 chips and DDR1/DDR2.

I really don't want to give up HT, so until the dual core AMD chips come out, I think I'll see if I can't get find a way to get around 3.5GHz with this MB and and my BH-5

I see 3 choices:

1) use a 5:4 divider
2) vdimm mod
3) DDR booster

2 & 3 seem like a good way to fry my board, so I'll probably just see if I can use the divider or get a 3.2c or something and try to run 1:1 with looser timings